


Earth 1281

by MrMoonPie



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Dalish Lore, Dragon Age is a Pretty Good Choice for a First Fanfiction, Elvhen, Elvhen Lore, Elvhen Pantheon, Evanuris, F/M, Forgotten Ones, I'm not really Sure What I'm Doing With This, Loneliness, Modern Girl in Thedas, Now I'm Not Really Sure, Red Lyrium, Romance, Slow Burn, Waking up an elf, Work In Progress, but fuck it, but it seemed like a good idea
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-02-29 03:18:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18770125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrMoonPie/pseuds/MrMoonPie
Summary: Perhaps I had moved from an Earth 1281 to an alternate Earth 616.It would explain the magic at least, but I was really expecting to meet somebody like Spider-man, not an ancient Elvhen Trickster God who I seemed to remember.  It wasn't a surprise I couldn't remember how I remembered him when I didn't even know my own name.A twist on the 'Modern girl in Thedas' trope.





	1. Another World

**Author's Note:**

> I would just like to add a note saying this is my first time really publishing. Apart from shitty one-shots that can be found on FF.net, I am sorely lacking in both writing and publishing experience, but I enjoy Dragon Age too much to not contribute to the community.
> 
> I would be very happy if errors are pointed out so I can change them.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which jumping from Earth to Thedas proves jarring.

**It was of little consequence that I didn’t want to die.**

Within the last moments of the life I had settled for, I saw my regrets. The lack of family. The lack of friends. The self-imposed isolation I had settled for, and how deeply I wished for something other than a lonely existence. How I wish I had cared for more than menial wealth.

It was then that I realised that I didn’t want to die. If you had asked me days ago, I would have said that it was a natural part of life: nothing to fear, but nothing to wish for either. Now I lie, alone in the world I had contrived, dying where nobody would find me and with no control over what may happen next.

_Until I woke up._

 

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

 

A bone-deep chill settled within my chest, the cold unnerving in its insistence, but comforting in its realness.

_It was real._

_I was not dead._

The thought drove me to open my eyes and expose myself to the greyness of stone walls. Carved into the cavern were beautiful inlayed sculptures of deities and figures, each graced with the pointed ear of a Tolkien Elf. It was startling in its simplistic extravagance; they were carved in shapes and missing the facial features that would have been painstakingly formed in any other art piece.

I had found myself swathed in light beige cloth and lying in an open coffin, an alter placed near the entrance of the cavern and a stone tablet set within the smooth stone of the ground next to it.

_The cavern had been literally dug out._

Moving my arms to the high sides of the coffin ( _an unnerving development. Was I technically buried alive?_ ) and pulling myself carefully out. The weight and muscle I had was seemingly sapped from my being. It was thin arms that pulled a gaunt body out of the coffin. A body deemed dead in all but spirit was the one I inhabited, and it certainly wasn’t mine. Where there used to be a fair smattering of leg and arm hair, I found to be smooth ( _strange given my penchant to procrastinate shaving for as long as possible_ ), and my ring finger, that was usually peeling and calloused from long days of scribing translations, was smooth and lacked the distinctive writers’ bump.  
It wasn’t my own body. I was not in my own home. And with the lack of anything recognisable, from the metals that surrounded me to the fabrics of the clothing I donned, I was probably not even in my own world.

String Theory? A dream perhaps. But I was not nearly creative enough.

Perhaps I had moved from an Earth 1281 to an Earth 616.

I sat on the edge of the dark coffin, fingers clenched white against the unrecognisable metal and legs shaking from the smallest of use. If I had not been driving from Brussels to Roscoff mere minutes ago, I would have called it muscle atrophy, but a car accident doesn’t cause this kind of damage. Nor does it transport innocent, unassuming ( _and lonely_ ) linguists to different universes. Perhaps my own universe had been merged with another, pulled through the merging point to another reality entirety.

_Or perhaps it was just me._

Lost in a place I had no knowledge of, or somewhere on Earth that I had seemingly been trapped in a lot longer than a measly few minutes. It seemed completely unreasonable, but I thought that unreasonable was a reasonably good guess considering a had just woken up from my own coffin in what seemed to be a cavern carved with the designs of sharp-eared deities that I had no recollection of seeing in any of the _Lord of the Rings films_.

With all the grace of a baby dear, I stood upon the thin legs that I had atrophied uncomfortably from the state that I was used to. Though not comfortable, movement proved helpful in gaining feeling back to the numb, shaky appendages. The entrance to the cavern from what seemed much further than it actually was as I trailed my hands over the grooves in the wall to hold myself steady upon increasingly shaky legs.

The doors themselves were a mesh of wood and a steal-like metal ( _well, it was shiny and hadn’t rusted despite the fact the place seemed ancient_ ) ensconced cleverly into the stone walls. It was, however, the feeling of rightness that came from the door ( _a door of all things_ ) that had entranced me. The subtle buzzing of something bigger than myself seemed pungent within the stale air; it felt as if the air had become charged. The feeling bit at my skin, pulling and nipping, but soothing the pleasure-pain with a balm of belonging.

“Holy shit,” were the first words that had come out of my mouth since I woke up.

Though I was sure that the body wasn’t mine ( _I would have never procrastinated leg day for this long_ ), the voice assuredly was. The accented English brushed smoothly off my tongue, as if my first language.  
Set upon the door were what looked like Nordic runes, complete with arrows and rectangular, geometric symbols. It was like a dream come true. But at the same time, it confirmed that I had somehow misplaced my own Earth and had descended on an Earth 616 complete with entrancing doors and being buried alive within my own personal tomb.

Though not similar to the ancient Nordish runes that I had developed an interest in during my early University life, I could understand them. _Fluently_. At this point, it seemed apt to assume that the body that I had inhabited was the one who had spoken such a language, and was perhaps also the one that felt the draw towards the buzzing that danced upon skin.

The body that wasn’t my body, but is now my body reached its hand out automatically, pressing a smooth palm upon the lettering engraved into the dark wood of the looming door. What felt like an electric shock ran up my arm and settled between my lungs, knocking the breath out of my chest as it moved like a warm parasite between my organs. In my discomfort, I didn’t notice the door crack open a fraction, exposing the cavern to a shallow cave system. Light filtered from the exit of the cave that was curved from sight to slither through the opening.

Despite the discomfort that the electric shock had given, it now sat, almost warm and welcoming, within my stomach. It was a familiar feeling, but a feeling that I was sure I had never experienced all the same.  
So as the foreign arms that I controlled opened the door wider, I found myself bathed in dim light, making me wonder why I could see well in the cavern in the first place. It was as I stepped out of the crippling darkness that I saw the pile of skeletons that had fallen outside the door, each close enough to the door to touch, but with skin and flesh burned and decayed away, they would not be moving towards it anymore.  
It was here that, despite my experience in the scouts and preparing the animals on my parents’ farm for slaughter when I was younger, I threw up.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

If I may set the scene, my first encounter with this world was one of confusion. With a strange buzz that I later learnt was magic trapped deep within my being, I found myself bathed in the first faint light that I had ever seen of this world, retching bile over the remains of Tevinter soldiers that had tried to find me a millennium ago.  
Thedas would not be kind to me, and this was something that I had yet to accept.


	2. The Magic of Thedas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Magic is strange and somehow feeling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have ideas.

Navigating the world that I had come to know as Thedas became problematic as I wondered further from the uninhabited stretch of overgrowth that had hidden my tomb from the eyes of wanderers.

The bile had burned the back of my throat as I dribbled everything I had over the dusty white of ancient bones, eyes watering and the too-large beige clothing slipping from my shoulders as I leaned down upon the decayed corpses.

A part of me knew that the blacked fingers of the bones was due to the warmth that now cuddled close to my chest.  The buzzing that pulsed pleasurably against the core of my being had slowed from an electric pulse to a companionable awareness beneath the skin the further I moved from the tomb.

After my Jesus stint ( _resurrecting from the dead a day after being trapped in a tomb, obviously_ ), I had simply walked, using the skills I had thought useless from a childhood of farming and psychical hardship before the Romanian landgrab.   
In the beginning, I couldn’t walk quickly due to the muscle atrophy that my slumber had inflicted upon the body that I had taken.  It was long, hard days where I couldn’t walk fast, left only with enough energy to collect the meagre food that I had been brave enough to try ( _and then religiously stuck with as to not try my luck_ ).

It was perhaps a few weeks later than I realised that I could walk with the ease as my past self.  I was once a traveller.  Sometimes I had travelled due to my work, other times it was for joy as I could glean none of this from this from the loneliness of house I had purchased in Brussels after my first ‘ _big break_ ’ in the translation industry.  
It was a pleasing discovery.  I had expected a month at least before my tired appendages healed and grew back to what they could be, but apparently the healing process had quickened without the physical therapy that I would have once searched for within the modern world.

The decrease in effort put into walking meant more distance travelled, and then it meant enough energy to attempt to hunt something other than the dark berries I had deemed safe enough to eat.  It was here that I took the next step to assimilating myself into the world that I had become part of.

The warmth in my chest had grown, pulsing with the beat of my footsteps as I stumbled over the forest overgrowth.  It had not escaped my notice that the foliage had been less dense, the blues and greys of overhead creeping through the broad leaves and winding branches of the foreign trees.  It would not become long before I would have to forsake sleeping between the trees on beds of leaves and moss.

The air became colder and the ground developed a layer of dewy frost every morning, the remnants of freezing nights dripping from green shoots. 

Sleep became increasingly difficult. 

It was at breaking point that I realised that sleeping would quickly become dangerous the further I walked South.  If I slept for more than an hour within the freezing temperatures, there may come a time where I didn’t wake up, too cold to continue and too tired to bring myself to wake fast enough.

When it became bad, it became bad very quickly.

Despite my meagre training in survival that stemmed from a childhood of barely surviving on a small Romanian farm while our pastures were taken over by German hotel owners, I had never been ready for survival in such difficult conditions.  With no livestock or roof to call my own, I doubted that this world would leave me standing, uncrippled and unharmed, for much longer.

It was as my feet became sore and my legs burned with the exertion of walking further than usual that I found myself wondering why I even bothered in the first place.  Having scraped bark from the trees of the forest, I chewed on a chunk to keep my mouth moving and my mind off the languorous pace that my footsteps had adopted, each thumping slower than the next.

I would inevitably die sooner rather than later.  With yet another world where I had no relations, I felt myself wondering the usefulness of life itself.  Monotony was fun for a while after the realisation that I was alive and stuck in a new, perhaps wonderous, place, but it quickly developed an insipid taste, characterised by jaded eyes and a lifeless world.

This universe was missing something integral to its identity.  The warmth that pulsed within my chest rose at the thought, becoming suffocating in nature.  Its reactivity to the train of thought was almost uncontrollable.  With only my waning willpower, I attempted to shut the surge of warmth back down to where it rested between my ribs, only to be met with a deep resistance.  The fire in my body that had been pushed down so many times rose to brush against my skin.  It pushed against my fingertips, inducing the same sensation one would feel when re-piercing their ears with a blunt earring.

The seemingly sentient _energy_ pushed harshly against every fibre of my being, breaking through invisible barriers to manifest itself as raw beauty.

Raw energy shined for but a moment upon my fingertips before ensconcing my hand in a roaring flame that danced in the air, deprived of oxygen for far too long.

The chill of the air was chased away as it flickered upon my palm of my hand, controlled but free. 

“What the _fuck_ ,” I whispered harshly in a language I couldn’t recognise despite speaking it.  My chapped lips cracked from the small movements and vocal cords ached in disuse.  Both side-effects of being enveloped in the curse of isolation after far too long alone.

Stretching my fingers out, I watched as the small flame followed, playful in nature, but unpainful and manifesting only a warming, welcome heat.  The burn that should have ensued from its close proximity never manifested.

_Magic._

The buzzing feeling.   _It was magic_.  And it was incredible.

Could I sleep upon a warmed ground, heated with the energy that manifested itself within me, or is it a wasted gift, bestowed upon a woman doomed to die within a world that I would perhaps never consider my own.  It could save my lie, but would it.  As the South drew nearer, I had found myself wishing endlessly for a spark of hope like this.  Something that may allow me to simply start over in this new world.  I wanted to make friends, as juvenile as that sounded.  Perhaps I could create a family.  Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but I had died once ( _possibly twice if you considered I found myself in a tomb underground and forgotten for what looked like generations_ ) and I wanted no more regrets before I passed once again.

Within this hope, a vague memory guided my hands.  Dropping to my hands and knees in the safest place I could find at an early notice, the memory guided the fluid movements that drew a geometric symbol into the hard dirt that I had pressed my hands and knees into.

The warmth that had begun to traverse my body pressed once again against the barriers of my being as I attempted to open the invisible barrier that separated the magic from the outside world.  It was less painful.  Less like re-piercing and ear and more like sliding a ring into a well-used hole.  The exhilarating burst of excitement that the warmth seemed to exert made me smile slightly as the geometric symbol that I had drawn into the hard dirt lit up, melting the frost that had begun to form upon the foliage that surrounded where I knelt.

Tears pricked my eyes as I realised that I had a chance of living here.  A chance of being somebody that I had always wanted to be.  A chance of not regretting what I had done with this life when it came to an end.

It was the first good night’s sleep I had had in weeks.


	3. The Blood of the Elves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A first contact of sorts.

The Tirashan is what they called the forest.  With ears as pointed as my own ( _a discovery found only once I had seen my own reflection in a pool of water_ ) they thundered upon the forest ground, red markings shining from their skin and their very cores whispering nefariously into the void.

The land had pooled into a crater, the gradient steepening the further towards the middle I walked.  It was on the other side of the dip and far away from my stone tomb that I found the first ‘people’ I had encountered. 

Their ears were smaller than my own, pushed grotesquely far into their heads that the tips almost seemed to wrap around their own skulls, deformed and manic in their appearance.  Eyes coloured red were cunning, but not quiet.  They hid promises of pain, but also ones of relief, of temptation and desire.  The darkness within their features took an even darker turn as I saw scouts traipsing upon the dwindling forest foliage. 

Their facial markings glowed an eerie red below the stars.  If there was anything that movies taught me, red was bad. 

Red was _always_ bad.

_The Forgotten Ones_ was the name whispered among the trees.  A name uttered only by the slurred drawl that upheaved from the creatures’ mouths, burning my ears just as the bile did after escaping my own tomb.

_The Forgotten Ones_ they praised in a language clunky and unnatural to their serpentine tongues as they bowed beneath shrines smothered with the dried blood of their kills ( _both human and animal my mind told me_ ).  They cursed a wolf’s name as they cried for repentance beneath gore smattered stone. 

The red of the dried blood hid the crystals that grew throughout the shrines, glowing and revelling in mortal temptation as it called upon the warmth that I had come to know as _magic_.

While the Elvish monsters cried tears of blood upon the shrines of malicious Gods, I tried to get away.  I would run from one encampment to find another.  They circled the crater, worshiping the land in a fashion that I knew not how to explain.

Despite staying as far away from the encampments as possible, I found myself picking up information through both word of mouth and through slips of parchment from those still sane enough of mind to write, even if they did utilise an elongated fingernail and their own blood.

Elgar’nan was apparently one of their evil Gods. One of the ones their _Forgotten Ones_ had set out to eradicate.  The Sun and the Land gave birth to him, a mother and father who created the perfect son.  He was a man who was beautiful and intelligent, and one who developed great joy from seeing his mother’s, the Land’s, creations.  
It was told that the Sun grew murderous, jealous with the happiness that Elgar’nan drew from the Land.  He burned the most beautiful of the Land’s world to a crisp, jealous of the joy that his son had found in the Land’s creations.    
The Land cried, creating oceans with her tears. Elgar’nan saw his mother’s pain and fought with the sun for an eternity, throwing the sun from the sky into a deep abyss. The absence of his father threw the Land into darkness, with only a single twinkle in the sky to lighten the darkness that their battle had wrought upon the world.

The monstrous Elves believed the crater the abyss that the Sun had been buried beneath, and awaited the day for their Gods’ sworn enemy’s enemy to rise and aid them in their plight to destroy the Pantheon and all their creations.

_Definitely not earth_ , I reminded myself.

I snuck as close to the camps as I dared, scared but also curious.  This world had begun to show its true colours: crystal red dripped in deceit.    
The elders of the creatures resided close to the centre of the camps, protected by their children.  It was quite clear that the deformities the monsters harboured were a result of incest.  The elders stood tall with golden hair and pale skin, swathed in the ripped cloths of ages gone.  Despite their clean skin and pallid expression, insanity lit the red of their eyes, the whites of their eyes having turned a gunmetal grey as their pin-prick pupils darted from object to object, never truly resting.  They sat within open tents comprising in foreign animal furs, stitched painstakingly together, but still ripping apart at the seams. 

It was their voices that truly made me notice them at first.

The language that sounded clunky and abhorrent from the children’s mouths danced beautifully within their own.  The very words they spoke rattled the magic hidden within my chest, their tongues imbuing the commands with intent that the other creatures seemed not to harbour.

It was truly unfortunate that they were fucking insane.  The air seemed to gather around them, housing them in a barrier of buzzing energy as their very being interfered with air’s flow.  _This must be closer to what normal elves were like_ , was my first thought.  My second was an educated ‘ _Oh shit_ ’ as a pair of glassy red eyes locked onto my own, a bird-like screech scratching the vocal cords of the monster as they called out.

Dozens of manic eyes turned towards the tree that I had quietly hefted myself into to gain a vantage point ( _more for simple curiosity more than safety_ ).

It was safe to say I didn’t stick around any longer, and by that, I mean that I fled as if Elgar’nan himself was nipping at my heels.

 

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

 

A mere twenty-seven days was all it took to traverse through the forest from start to end. 

Twenty-seven days since I had woken up from my own death-bed and twenty-seven since I found myself lost from my own world and met with constellations and beings beyond my own imagination ( _this was the only reason I that allowed me to admit that I wasn’t dreaming_ ).

The sparse foliage that had once been a teeming canopy levelled into dry grass.  Though a chill still hung in the air, it was dry and still, populating the grassland with yellowing grass and cracked soil.  Despite my first run-in with the local wildlife ( _if you could call the monsters as such_ ), the curiosity that welled up within me wasn’t sated, but instead it drove me to want to find something beautiful within this world.

Skin that had once been pulled tight across bony wrists and emancipated wrists was now lightly tanned from the few days that had been spent within trees that didn’t cover the very skies, and smooth hands had become calloused with the hardships of daily life surviving.   
Though it wasn’t a new feeling, I was surprised by the determination that the warm magic brought me, its essence throbbing with my heartbeat as I grinned at the plains that lay before me.

It was going to be harder to find food here than it was in the forest, but here there were no crazy elves obsessed with sacrificing innocent travellers and even their own brethren to malevolent Gods.  It had become warmer too, since the time that she had cradled herself within the hold of her fire symbol within the crater.

It would become not necessarily easier, but different.  It would mean a new adaption would have to be made, but also meant that there may be people ( _people!_ ) wandering among the plains.

But ultimately, I was excited to experience this new world.


	4. The Wolves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps and encounter with a wolf... and perhaps more than just the animal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually have most of the main plot points partially written just because I found it unreasonably run writing them. Everything from meeting Solas to closing the breech and finding Solas'... 'true' ;) identity has been at least mapped out. Sheer boredom of the exam season can take a lot out of somebody. 
> 
> tbh, I just need to flesh out descriptions, read up on the grammar of doing speech (never really done it before so have never needed it) and then write the inbetween (thats by far the hardest shit in the world. how do u get from snowy no-where to haven and how long should it take lmao???).  
> It's low-key super fun writing this

_“You are a marvel, my dear,” He said, voice smooth and level as he stared upon the mask I donned._

_His hair, shaved up the sides, hung in carefully arranged dreadlocks, adorned by trinkets of varying worth that had been weaved between the thick strands.  A wolf jaw was settled upon his chiselled features while the top of the mouth hung upon his forehead, giving the impression that you were looking into a wolf’s mouth.  The man I stared into the eyes of was nothing if not intimidating._

_“If I were a marvel, perhaps I would have succeeded in avoiding you, f̵f̸̷̸̸̷-̢͢͜n̵͟͢͜͡.”_

_I would not have dared to talk to any of the e͜͢҉̡v̴͟͡ą̴͡-̵̴͘͡_̴̕r̕͡-͘͠͠͠s͝ in such a way, but his countenance seemed to invite defiance. However, in a room adorned with pillars created from crystal and a startlingly large throne (complete with the man who considers himself a_ king _) created to enforce power, it was a dangerous game._

_“You and I both know that wouldn’t happen, dear, a rabbit does not simply_ avoid _a w̴͢-̢̨l̵̛-̨͞.” He replied, a smirk twitching at his lips as he stared into the eyes of the mask.  I knew he was finding irony in my appearance.  What w̴͢-̢̨l̵̛-̨͞ wouldn’t be amused by a –_

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

Sanity seemed to have evaded my sleeping my mind for as long as I had been in this world.  Apparently starved of familiarity, my mind had begun to create impossible scenarios to accustom me to the world, implementing my understanding of my original life with aspects of this one.  Dreams of wealthy ballrooms and powerful leaders raged within my unconscious.  If they were not so different from both this world and Earth, I would have considered it a _memory_ with how vivid they looked and the emotions that they induced within me.  
It was a shame that the clarity that I saw these dreams in did not translate to _real_ memories.

I had forgotten that I used to have one moon for a time.  And that cars ran on dead organisms that had broken down over millions of years as opposed to unexplainable magic.  I also couldn’t remember my parents’ faces.  Or what my hometown was called.  Or my _name_ for God’s sake.

Everything that I was had been replaced with what _could be_ and it terrified me to the point that I couldn’t breathe sometimes.  I was not me anymore, and it became debilitating in the silence that coated the horizon.  Animals were sparse in the marshes.  The distinctive lack of animals such as herons or even marsh-swelling fish hurt at times because it truly solidified that I was not _home_. 

It was only a certain breed of wolf that dared live in the muddy waters surrounding the vast craters of fresh water.  Despite the scarcity of food, the wolves seemed to not have encountered many people ( _they were even hesitant in their first attack, starving as they were_ ).  They often manifested themselves as shadows at the edge of my vision, watching and waiting for a weakness to bring me to my knees. 

Head hung, and thoughts of home only accompanied by the rhythmic _squelching_ of bare feet in stagnant water and mud, they approached, hungry but cautious and tired of waiting for my tired legs to collapse beneath me.  _Scared But Desperate_ , I reasoned.

Their red fur and startlingly large bodies were as foreign as anything else I had encountered in this world.  Short fur was matted and stretched across gaunt, animalistic features to create an image of startling depravity, even as separated from mankind as they were.  
The only aspect of the picture that prevented me from stepping backwards in fright was the small cub that hung half-dead from one of the pack’s jaw.

As the wolves came close, the whining began, a high-pitched whistling that made me grimace with its volume.  The unnatural pitch resonated with the air, pulling at my magic as it merely increased in intensity as they came closer as if begging me not to move away.  The cub shook violently where it was exposed to the air, its fur patchy and body scarily thin against its overly-large ears and eyes.  
At a respectable distance, the wolf slowly lowered itself to the ground, placing the young pup in front of itself before shuffling backwards away from both myself and its baby.

If the intent of the creatures wasn’t already clear, the intense pulling at my magic was somehow sad. _Desperate_.  

“Cacat,” was the word that I whispered beneath my breath. I couldn’t just ignore a starving wolf cub in the middle of a god-forsaken marsh. 

Moving slowly towards the young wolf, I took slow, deliberate movements as to not spook the adult wolves into making any aggressive movements against me if I read their intentions incorrectly.  Reaching down, I lifted the dirty cub into my hands, its small body barely the size of both my palms put together.  Moving backwards again, I stowed the small cub carefully within the tattered ruins of my clothing, the beige cloth not doing much to insulate the cub from the cold air, but instead allowing for the heat that I carefully controlled to warm the small thing.

Satisfied that their desperate request had been fulfilled, the wolves backed away much faster than I had, turning to run back the way they came.  The glances backwards were sparse but present, and as they disappeared out of view between the long grasses of the wetlands, a long howl split the silence.

The small cub hidden in my chest had stopped shivering against my breast, and had merely drifted into a tepid sleep of muffled yips and twitches. 

There was no discreet rustle of grass a I trudged on.  They truly had left their cub with a person ( _probably to ensure it survived for longer than the night_ ) and didn’t seem to be coming back for it.

With renewed determination to survive for both myself and the furry life, that had begun to filthy the beige wrappings with its wet, matted fur, I trudged on at a faster pace.  We would need food and shelter.  Preferably away from floodable land.


	5. Orlesian

It was one moon cycle since I had found myself pushing through muddy land.  It was strange to think that I had been part of this world for a little more than two months.  The time had passed so quickly amongst the struggle to remain alive within Tirashan, and afterwards in my effort to look after the small wolf that had been given to me by its pack to ensure its survival.  

I had quickly realised during my journey that Orlais was not somewhere I wanted to rest.  Despite my fatigue and the sheer joy that had accompanied the appearance of actual _people_ , I had gotten the hell out of dodge.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

_Walking through the streets of what I would have called the suburbs back on earth, I stared at the clearly French architecture, the white marble and greying cobblestone making me slightly homesick in its familiarity._

_This world, Thedas, was one of startling familiarity to Earth.  Cultures that were seemingly unique upon Earth had transcended across the fabric of the universe to manifest themselves upon a world that was not its own.  I found myself wondering whether French or_ Orlesian _came first.   The beauty of Orlais was certainly not something to trifle with.  The only stark differences was the lack of post-war technology, but I was quite sure that once this world developed further, it would almost be undifferentiable from Earth’s France._

_As I stared up at the magnificent details that they had incorporated into the design of even the simplest of houses, I was rudely pushed from my place and accosted with –_

_“Fucking rabbits.  Watch where you’re going, knife ear.”_

_The man pushed past me; his masked features contorted into a self-serving sneer.  His French, though accented differently to Earth’s, rang familiarly in my pointed ears.  I knew it well enough to know that the slur directed towards my person was one directed at my race as opposed to any behaviour I could change.  It seemed that Thedas encompassed attitudes from Earth as well._

_Looking over my shoulder at the disgusting man, my features deepened into a frown.  He was clothed in decadent fabrics, though the sheer number of ruffles incorporated into his dress shirt, was something that I would have scoffed at in another time.  This, paired with pointed shoes and an overly theatrical mask, reminded me of clowns.  Although he was certainly not somebody I would invite to meet any children. Despite his rather damnable fashion choices (_ though I had a feeling this was the general damnable fashion choices of the city itself _), he exuded ill-spent money.  The image that he had created for himself was one of intrigue and mystery; his mask was darkly coloured, and his clothing hid everything else about him._

_The shifting upon my breast stole my attention from the man, the small wolf that slept upon my chest rolling within the tattered shirt that I wore.  Despite still being nameless, he had slowly worn away at my heart._

_Brushing a hand over his head absentmindedly, I ambled along the cobbled streets._

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

It wasn’t long after that that I became intimately aware of the racism that ran rampant through the beautiful country.  The aesthetic pillars and sprawling cities were quickly overshadowed by the calls of “Knife Ear” or the less-than-welcome favour of what I assumed were this country’s Police.

There was no beating around the bush with that shit; there were times wherein I would simply be in a city somewhere, and they would take a single look at the pointed tips of my ears and proclaim me a suspicious character ( _though I assure you, their words were not quite as polite, nor quite as PC_ ).

It was for this reason that after a dispute with the very chevaliers that I attempted to avoid, I got the fuck out of dodge.  The proclamation that I was a thief and a “Filthy rabbit” was not a welcome one.  Having travelled months to reach civilisation, I had at least hoped that this was not all that this world had to offer.  I had seen enough racism back on Earth, and far too often those prejudices had resulted in violence that this world seemed only too used to.

Ferelden, they told me.

That was the next stop.  The merchant mentioned that no “knife ear” would be caught dead going to Tevinter, and even Nevarra was not the friendliest environment, and so Ferelden was the natural next step.  Despite the problem that many apparently had with my ears, he allowed me to travel with him.  The rickety cart that he used held a ridiculous number of wares.  It ranged from Orlesian food to fabrics and materials to simple training weapons.

“All useful to the people at the conclave,” he had said, well-spoken despite his apparently low-ranking merchant job. 

The cart itself was not that bad for what I had seen in this world.  The wood would splinter and embed itself into soft flesh if not careful, but the wheels were sturdy, and the cart itself build to haul all manner of products across Thedas.  His face lit up as he regaled the tales of his youth as he loaded the cart. His weatherworn wrinkles bunched around his mouth as he spoke, clearly unused to the attention that his exploits received.  His eyes looked fondly upon his horse as he spoke about how he got her.

“She was young at the time,” He said, staring at the beauty, “A runt, if I remember, but, Maker, I knew there was something about her, and I had worked with horses in my youth so I had enough knowledge to bring her up to be the lovely lady that you see here.”

A soppy smile made its way onto his lined face. 

It was an attitude towards many working animals that had been forgotten upon Earth.  A small smile graced my lips. 

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

The pup got older as we travelled.  No longer did he lie upon my breast, drinking what liquid food I could scavenge for him.  Fur had begun to sprout more evenly upon his little body.  Though still skinny, he almost looked like he would live. More often than not, he was curled into my lap for warmth as we travelled within the bumpy cart, his ears twitching with each dip, and his amber eyes seeking mine for comfort.

As he changed, I began to realise my own changes.  I had not had time to think since I had ‘landed’ on Thedas as I was focused on only my survival.  My body was very similar to the one I had on Earth.  Once I had began eating, even within that forest, the muscle and fat that was once layered on my tan skin on Earth had redeveloped ( _though this time with much more muscle than fat, I must say_ ).  My face, though somewhat more angular, held all the features that I had looked upon within mirrors on Earth; my eyes were still a hooded, almond shape, and still the dark brown that I had inherited from my late father, and the jet-black hair that I had often hated in my teenage years hung in waves around my “new” cheekbones.

I did, however, have magic… and pointed ears that were apparently so sensitive that a stiff wind was enough to make me vaguely uncomfortable.

So much had changed, but the little things that stayed the same were a boon within this new world.  The mirror that the merchant had left in the back allowed me to examine myself properly ( _something that my vanity was all too glad to take part in_ ).

Thedas, however, was going to difficult.

And so the sky split open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry! University got me *fucked up*.
> 
> aka ive been hungover constantly for the past month.


End file.
